Nothing Carved In Stone
by undercloakkept
Summary: Saturday, April 11, 2020. On Easter break, the Weasley and Potter families return to the grounds of Hogwarts Castle for “Spring Cleaning” à la Hermione. It is a time for rebirth, and Ron and Hermione fatefully discover that everything old is new again...


Nothing Carved In Stone

Ordinarily, Ron Weasley loved a picnic, but he was grumbling as he surveyed the humongous hamper that Hermione and Hugo had packed. He tucked his F&B Twigger 360 under his arm, slipped his wrist through the handle of a bulging paper bag, hoisted the hamper onto his hip and stomped out of the kitchen into the fresh morning air. He left the kitchen door swinging so violently behind him that it nearly clocked Hugo in the face.

"You're cheery," Hugo observed, breezing past his dad with his own favorite broom in hand. "What's wrong? Don't fancy wasting a perfectly good holiday scrubbing mouldy old graves?"

Father and son shared a mutual rolling of the eyes as Hermione and Rose joined them in the sprawling back garden. Hermione was carrying a pail containing gloves, small spades and an assortment of coarse brushes. Rose held a faded orange blanket under one arm and her Cleansweep 70-Series under the other.

Ron glanced impatiently at his watch. "They're supposed to be here already."

"You don't even want to go in the first place!" Hermione tried to tease him out of his foul mood. "What's your sudden hurry?"

Four pops, like Christmas crackers being pulled in quick succession, announced the arrival of the Potter clan. They were similarly encumbered with brooms, blanket, hamper and pail. Only Ginny was missing.

"How is she?" Hermione enquired of Harry.

"Absolutely huge and ill-tempered," James answered truthfully, before his dad could reply.

"She's a right beast," sniggered Al, pulling a monstrous face and curling his hands into threatening claws.

"Hey, that's my baby sister you're having a go at!" scolded Ron, but his eyes were twinkling as he whispered conspiratorially to his nephews. "Blast-ended skrewt or manticore?"

"Hey, that's my _wife_ you're having a go at!" Harry exclaimed, before continuing somewhat ruefully, "and I'd say she's more like an angry quintaped."

"Mate, I think that's probably an insult…to the _quintaped._"

Hermione interrupted their burst of laughter. "Well, how lovely and entirely sympathetic you _fathers _are." She focused her attention on Ron, with one eyebrow raised and hands on hips. He knew that combination was never a good sign. "I think you must have given up the idea of populating your own Quidditch team then, Ron, seeing as how you'll be calling me a skrewt behind my back once my ankles start to swell."

Ron had the good grace to look sheepish. "I'd never," he replied indignantly, as if she'd issued the most baseless accusation imaginable.

"No, never," Harry assured her, trying hard yet utterly failing to keep a straight face. "Although I do seem to remember hags being a topic of conversation around your eighth month with Hugo."

"Oi, mate, you're not helping me here."

"Hags are _beings_, Harry, not beasts."

"There you go, Harry, they're _beings,_" Ron taunted, before grabbing Hermione around the waist, kissing her noisily on the cheek and drawing a pretty blush for his efforts.

"Oh honestly, you two are like children yourselves half the time," Hermione admonished, but she was clearly amused. She slipped out of Ron's arms and wordlessly began to shepherd the children to just outside the garden gate, meanwhile giving Harry a look that meant she expected a straight answer.

"The Healer says Ginny can't travel too far, so she's gone to Molly for the day. Going to make _her_ life miserable for a change, help her pull together the Easter feast."

"Just a few more weeks," Hermione reassured him bracingly, "and Ginny'll be back to her old self."

"Ha!" Ron guffawed. "Now _there's_ something to look forward to." A playful skirmish broke out before Hermione called everyone to order.

"Okay, everybody got everything? Let's all stay close together, grab onto an adult, don't let go, and don't drop anything." With a well-synchronized turn on the spot, the Potters and the Weasleys vanished, leaving the pleasant garden to the gnomes.

They Apparated just outside the entrance that lay nearest to the Hogwarts greenhouses, where Neville Longbottom was eagerly waiting to greet them. He beamed at the children with genuine affection. "Back so soon? Seems like you left only yesterday. We've hardly had time to recoup."

"Last week, actually, Professor Longbottom," corrected Rose. The other children just chorused "Hey, Uncle Neville" as they swarmed past him onto the Hogwarts grounds.

"Don't any of you lot go into the castle. All buildings are strictly out of bounds to students during the holidays, remember," Neville ordered genially, quickly anticipating the next question. "And no, James, not even the locker rooms."

"But what if I need to go to the toilet?"

"You're a wizard, James. I'm sure you'll figure it out." Rose and Lily were sniggering as the boys took off for the pitch without a backward glance. Neville apparently had second thoughts. "Hey! You rotters stay out of my shrivelfig patch!"

Hermione had long since conceded that Hugo, Al and James created more havoc than help when it came to tending the Hogwarts cemeteries, at least until after they'd had a good fly. She started off towards the greenhouses at a brisk pace, the others following along in her wake with considerably less enthusiasm.

Ron clapped Neville on the shoulder. "How are things, Neville? How're things at the pub?" he asked with mock innocence, risking a glance at Hermione.

"'_How's the pub_?'" Hermione's gay laugh rang across the grounds. "You mean since _Thursday_? Don't think I'm not on to you, Ron Weasley."

Neville grinned happily at his friends, blushing as he updated them on his engagement to Hannah Abbott and his plans to move into her flat over the Leaky Cauldron. Then, swallowing hard, he awkwardly blurted out, "Colin says 'hello'. He's hoping you'll come up to the castle to see him, Harry. He enquired after you especially."

Colin Creevey had had the pluck to sneak back to Hogwarts and fight, but he'd apparently not been quite reconciled to an early death. He'd left behind his sad imprint, like a faded three dimensional photograph of himself, an inescapable reminder of the brave and lively boy who would never grow up to become a man. Colin's pursuit of his hero Harry Potter had been undeterred by death, and Harry's guilty avoidance of Colin had continued as well. Ron noticed that Harry's pace had unconsciously slowed as if an invisible weight had settled upon his shoulders. It was always that way when Harry encountered the ghost of someone who had died for him, and sadly, the Ghosts' Council was relatively crowded these last twenty-odd years at Hogwarts.

Ron tried to wave him off, but Neville forged ahead hopefully anyway. "Colin mostly haunts the Entrance Hall these days, if…if you were to go looking for him, that is."

"Creepy Creevey's alright for a ghost, I reckon," offered Rose, insensitive to the sober mood that had settled upon the adults. "Except he spends too much time in the sixth and seventh years' dormitories. Girls', that is."

"That's why we call him creepy," Lily contributed helpfully.

Hermione gasped and Ron exclaimed "That cheeky little blighter," before he could stop himself. Ron and Harry shared a look, everything forgotten but the fact that they were the fathers of adolescent witches. No doubt Colin was going to get the little chat with Harry Potter that he'd been hoping for, with Ron Weasley thrown in for good measure.

"I want to go to the forest to feed the thestrals. May I go find Hagrid?" Rose's tone was already petulant; she expected to be denied, and her mother didn't pleasantly surprise her.

"Rose, I had better not discover you've been feeding the thestrals again. Hagrid's only just got the herd healthy."

The Final Battle had many victims, not least among them Hogwarts' small herd of thestrals, which had suffered terribly in the war's aftermath, when they were suddenly revealed to nearly everyone. A long-held sense of casual entitlement combined with desperate necessity within the wizarding world had forced the thestrals into labor in the massive task of rebuilding Hogwarts Castle. Their increased visibility and legendary navigational skills ultimately gave rise to their use for unregulated mass transport, and for more than a decade, the mysterious magical creatures had hardly been given a moment's privacy or peace.

The plight of the thestrals hadn't long escaped the notice of young Under-Secretary Hermione Granger, however, and she had waged a tireless campaign on their behalf. "Mr. Diggory and I worked very hard at the Department for the Regulation and Control of Magical Creatures in order to protect the thestrals. They're no longer to be interfered with, and you're no exception to the rules, Rose Weasley."

Neville's newsflash didn't aid Hermione's efforts at dissuasion. "They've started breeding again," he announced enthusiastically. "Hagrid says he's sighted babies recently, several of them."

"It's not _fair_ that Rose and Hugo can see them when I can't. And Lorcan and Lice feed them all the time, they told me so, even though they can't see them yet. I want to be able to see the babies," pouted Lily, who was trotting along in order to keep up with her Aunt Hermione's pace.

"No, you don't." Harry snapped at her, before softening his tone. "All things in due time, Liln'. Let's just be glad you can't see them for a while longer, okay?"

"The Scamanders are an exception, Lily, to virtually _every_ rule. And don't call Lysander 'Lice'; you know it makes him cry." Hermione's back received a glare followed by some muttering from her niece, but Lily was quickly quelled by her Uncle Ron's disapproving frown. Teasing his own sister may be in bounds, but disrespecting Hermione was _not on_, and everyone had better remember it.

As they neared the greenhouses, Ron expertly diverted Lily and Rose's attention with a distraction maneuver, one of his particular parental specialties. "Hey girls, your Granddad's been bargain hunting again; he's sent along a whole bag of Muggle board games that he picked up at a jumble sale last weekend." Ron handed over the bulging bag of games. "Go and find something to entertain yourselves." Anticipating Hermione's reluctance to lose her two helpers, he reminded her in a voice too low for the girls to overhear, "C'mon, Babes, they're supposed to be on _holiday._"

At Hermione's approving nod, the girls took the orange picnic blanket and the bag and headed to the outskirts of the grassy clearing, circling about for a good spot to settle down. Ron and Harry set down the hampers and pails, but held fast to their brooms, looking longingly in the direction of the Quidditch pitch before Hermione snapped them to attention.

"Oh, no. None of that. Not until we've finished here at least."

"I'll take Dobby, then," Harry sighed with resignation. It was the same every year. After the Final Battle, it hadn't taken Harry long to decide that Dobby needed to come home to Hogwarts, and after a sad pilgrimage that he had insisted upon taking alone, he had again dug a small grave by hand and laid Dobby in his final resting place.

For years, the little graveyard tucked discreetly beside the Hogwarts greenhouses had been used exclusively for house-elf burial and been little noticed by anyone, but after the Final Battle, others had also come to be buried there, making it a final home for those who had nowhere else to call their own. Hermione had made it one of her personal missions to keep the slowly expanding graveyard in proper order, and, naturally, she had conscripted all those within reach to her cause. "Spring Cleaning," as she called it, had become an attendance-mandatory annual family outing, taking place on the Saturday before Easter, come rain or shine. In the tradition first set by Harry over twenty years before, all the work was done by hand.

"Okay, Ron, you do the far one first. Best to just get it over with," Hermione directed matter-of-factly, gesturing towards a lone grave on the outskirts of the clearing. She pointedly ignored Ron's shudder as she handed him a spade and brush. "And I'll do the elves over there. Or would you rather I help you take down the wards first?"

Ron was about to take her up on the offer, as his was a particularly eerie job, much too steeped in ancient rituals of the macabre for his preference. In truth, he'd just as soon have Hermione's company. But when she continued, somewhat patronizingly, he thought, "Do you remember everything, the order they go in, the proper incantations?" he stubbornly changed his mind.

"I'm an _Auror_, for Merlin's sake, Hermione, I think I can handle it," he said brusquely, more abruptly than he really intended. Having learned from years of marriage, he turned back and kissed Hermione on the tip of her nose, tilting her chin and reassuring, "It's just another grave. Nothing but superstition and dust. You stay up here and work with Harry. Sounds like he could stand the company of a sympathetic witch."

Hermione briefly laid the back of her hand against his cheek, retracing the path of a hundred gentle caresses that had gone before. "There's a good husband," she praised teasingly, before prodding him gently on his way.

Ron strode to the nameless stone, which was set well apart from all of the others. Steeling himself against the instinctive revulsion at being this close to the remains of Lord Voldemort, he took a deep breath, squared his stance, drew his wand and began to methodically remove the complex layers of wards, shields and charms that had been placed upon the solitary grave. Not since Hogwarts itself had been secured, and later the Chamber of Secrets that lay within it, had so many witches and wizards collaborated to make a single place so impenetrable. Uncertain whether they were keeping things out or keeping things in, the victors of the Final Battle had taken no chances and spared no protective spell.

In the days immediately after the Final Battle, there had been much discussion about how to dispose of the remains of Lord Voldemort and the dead Death Eaters. The Death Eaters' bodies had quickly been dispatched to their families and villages. Some wanted to ritually and symbolically destroy Lord Voldemort's physical body. Some preferred brute evisceration and dismemberment; others suggested the body be burned, its ashes magically bound and sunk into the depths of the lake. Others merely wanted to send the loathsome corpse far, far away, as if by doing so they could obliterate the very memory of the terrible Dark Lord. But Professor McGonagall and Kingsley Shacklebolt, the newly appointed Hogwarts Headmistress and Minister of Magic, respectively, had seen to it that Harry's wishes, once he had finally voiced them, were honoured in this regard.

Tom Riddle was quietly buried on the hallowed grounds of Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, where his grave would suffer no desecration, nor would it invite unholy pilgrimage, a perverse shrine to evil, and unsaid, but understood by one and all, where it could be kept under constant surveillance. In those first days after the Final Battle, it was still too soon for anyone, especially Harry Potter, to completely believe the dark days were truly over; they'd simply seen too much evil. They laid the body of Tom Riddle on the outskirts of the informal Hogwarts house-elf cemetery, in a lone deep grave set well apart from the others not only by distance but by magical barriers. At Harry's insistence, the grave of He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named had later been marked with a simple marble monument at its head, but there was neither date nor name etched upon it to memorialize him. For the Dark Lord, there was nothing carved in stone.

And so it was that on this fine spring day, instead of lying in or playing Quidditch with Harry and the kids, Ron Weasley was on his knees, scrubbing moss and mould from the faceless, nameless stone on The-Grave-That-Bears-No-Name. Nothing other than his wife's unflappable insistence that the job must be done, and their unspoken agreement that Harry never be allowed to deal with it himself, could have compelled Ron to do the grotty job. "I'd sooner be scrubbing the toilet in Hagrid's hut, you effing evil bastard," Ron muttered under his breath. He was almost finished with the unpleasant task when he heard Rose yelp.

"Uncle Harry, Lily's playing with snakes again. Make her stop."

Ron and Harry were instantly on their feet, converging on the girls from different directions. "S'all right, Rose," Ron called. "Why don't you just go ahead up to the pitch? We'll be up there soon for lunch." Rose wasted no time taking her dad up on that offer, and she was on her Cleansweep and off to the pitch before her mum could protest.

Harry and Ron reached Lily, who was lying on her back on the orange blanket, and who indeed seemed to have conjured several grass snakes that had been awakened by the warm spring sunshine. The harmless green serpents coiled like charmed bracelets around her arms, writhing across her jeans and almost disappearing against the background of her bright green "Team Slytherin" tee shirt. Ron and Harry's eyes met over her head. "Lily, you and I are going to have to have a talk about playing with snakes, love," Harry said. "Let's take them over to that stand of trees over there, okay?" Harry helped her up, took her by the hand and began to walk slowly towards the trees. Ron could not hear the soft, sibilant sounds that he knew Harry was making, yet he watched in fascination that never grew old as the snakes followed Harry where he led them, and then remained where he apparently bade them stay. Lily, Ron noticed, never took her eyes off of her dad's lips.

When Harry and Lily returned, Ron had already folded the blanket, and he squatted and affectionately poked his niece in the tummy. "Nice shirt, by the way, Lil. Looks like the Sorting Hat got you right, anyway."

"Mum says it means I've got great ambitions, that I'll do great things one day, like you and Daddy did."

"I 'spect she's right on that, Lily," Ron said, "but don't let her know I agreed with her on anything, alright?" Lily grinned at him adoringly and began to gather up the games she and Rose had been playing with.

Ron noticed that Harry seemed somewhat worse the wear for his short stroll with Lily. "What's wrong there, mate? You're not looking so good."

Harry removed his glasses and pinched the bridge of his nose. Resettling his glasses, he ran both hands through his unruly hair, briefly pausing to massage his scalp and temples. "Dunno," he said, wiping beads of sweat from his brow with his forearm. "I've got a rotten headache. I guess it's the sun." Ron chortled at that. "The sun, is it now? You're a wizard, Harry, not a telly vampire. You wouldn't be trying to skive off of Spring Cleaning now would you? Or backing down from that one-on-one Quidditch challenge?"

Harry didn't take the bait at Ron's attempts to take the mickey, a sure signal he really wasn't feeling well. Neville had got up from where he'd been laying out flats of flower seedlings for Hermione, and with one close look at Harry, he effortlessly took charge, a role that seemed to come surprisingly naturally to him these days but which still took some getting used to for his old school chums.

"Come on up to the flat, Harry. It's cool up there and I've got a herbal that'll put you to rights."

"Thanks, Neville," Harry said, and he headed towards the main greenhouse without protest. He turned on the steps and called to Hermione. "I'll be back in a minute. Keep an eye on Lily, would you?"

"Feel better, Harry!" Hermione called cheerily. She was on her knees, pulling the final few weeds Harry had left upon Dobby's grave. Ron watched as Hermione lovingly pulled grass from around the beautifully carved stone that honored the heroic free elf. Settling down near her, he sank to his knees and, considerably less lovingly, began scraping moss from one of the few non-elf graves buried behind the greenhouse. With his fingers, he cleared away the grooves of the etched name - Argus Filch. Mrs. Norris lay nearby, of course, so he grudgingly cleared her tiny plot too. Every so often, Ron could hear a shout coming from the pitch, or see one of the boys circle high above the silhouette of the castle's northern tower. He moved quickly on to Kreacher, of whom they'd all actually become quite fond, and when he finished, he turned his considerable charm on his wife.

"C'mon 'Mione," he cajoled, "Let me go up. You know they're probably having a butterbeer and a game of some sort. Hell, Harry's probably sneaked out the back and gone flying already." When Hermione only looked dismissive, he persisted, but with less good humour. "It's springtime, Hermione, the first decent flying day of the season. I just don't understand why you'd rather us spend time with the dead than the living."

Hermione sat back on her heels and looked at him in genuine surprise. "We're not spending time with the dead, Ron. We're spending time _in the comfort of the living_. People like to visit their loved ones in the spring, especially their war dead. Do you have any idea how bleak it is to face a forlorn, unkempt grave after a long winter? Do you really think I spend all that time on my knees at your family's plot just to chat with Fred and your Great Auntie Muriel?" she asked in exasperation, although Ron was already looking appropriately chastened.

Never one to surrender a verbal advantage, Hermione continued. "I do it for your _mum_, Ron, and for _Arthur_ and for _George_. To help _them_ feel more at peace, to make _their_ visits of more comfort to them." Hermione placed her hands on her thighs and squinted through the sunshine up at Ron. "Don't you feel better knowing that your final resting place will be respected, that you'll be remembered and your grave cared for and visited? I know you don't like to think about such things, but, you do know that's how it will be, don't you?"

Ron just swallowed and nodded, realizing for the first time that although he'd never even given it a thought, he did know it. He knew it with an oddly comforting certainty.

"Well then," Hermione concluded with satisfaction, as if he'd just proved her point for her, "you know it because of what you see me do, year after year, and because of what I teach your children is properly expected of them." She turned back to her task, her profile hidden by dark waves of hair, but Ron didn't need to see her face to guess her expression. "Tending graves is a gift of love, Ron, and also a promise of sorts, that we make to the _living_." The sad catch in her voice told him everything. "The dead certainly don't care."

Ron crawled over to her on his hands and knees and planted a kiss on her damp forehead, where tangles of curls lay matted from the heat. "Will I ever stop learning from you, Hermione Granger?"

"Hermione Weasley," she beamed at him, wiping away a few tears before returning to her work, leaving Ron to think of all the times he'd let his wife go alone to visit her parents' graves. Although he and Hermione had finally brought them home from Australia, shock and mistrust had taken its bitter toll, and her parents had ultimately chosen to live and die as Monica and Wendell Wilkins. Monday morning, Ron vowed, he'd get up early and go directly to their graves. He'd get there before Hermione did this year, and she'd find things reassuringly tidy and trim and well-tended for a change. Maybe he'd even get some flowery things from Neville and plant them. Perhaps then her face wouldn't be so sad, so swollen from weeping when she returned. If only the stone said Granger…but there were some things that neither regret, nor prayer, nor even magic could rectify.

"I've been meaning to tell you, I'm arranging for all of the elves employed by Hogwarts to go on holiday this year, all at once, so that they can do things together if they choose."

"A house-elf holiday!" Ron laughed out loud. "Wherever do you think they're going to go?"

"Ron," she chastised disapprovingly, "you know we don't call them house-elves any longer. And they'll go wherever they like; that's the whole point. They'll take a well-deserved week off from working."

"They'll hole up in the Room of Requirement and wait it out, is more like! Moaning and groaning and tearing out what little hair they have. And just who's going to take care of things around here, then? Hagrid? He can barely walk anymore. He's got a dozen or more elves taking care of him alone."

"_W_e are," Hermione replied unperturbed, as if it were the most obvious solution in the world. "The parents, you and me, we're going to do the elves' work for them. Next week I plan to circulate a sign up petition, recruit parents from each House, organize shifts, and then I'll assign tasks according to talents."

"Guess you won't be working in the kitchens, then, huh, Babes?" When she reached out to swat him, Ron tumbled her over and swept her into a playful kiss. "Will you finally sneak me up to the girls' dormitory, at least?"

"Ron, behave! We're in a graveyard for goodness sake! And the children…" Hermione's eyes were sparkling, though, as she propped herself up on her elbows and scanned the clearing. "Where's Lily gone off to?" Ron stood up, brushing the grass from his jeans. His eyes swept the grounds, and when Hermione saw him stiffen and heard his quick intake of breath, she quickly scrambled to her feet as well.

Lily Potter kneeled, uncharacteristically still, at the foot of the forbidden far grave. Her dark hair was blowing gently back from her face, although the day was calm and windless. Her hands hung limp at her sides. Only her lips moved, _whispering, whispering_. Although the sky was cloudless, Ron and Hermione watched with dawning horror as shadows seemed to cast themselves ominously across the blank headstone of The-Grave-That-Bears-No-Name. For just an instant, its surface seemed almost liquid, animated, _alive_.

Ron felt the flesh on his arms crawl as the hair stood on end, making the skin pull tautly, uncomfortably across his shiny scars. Hermione's sudden grip on his wrist was painful. "Ron, did you see that?"

"Lily!" Ron reached Lily first, nearly tackling her as he swept her away from the grave. She didn't protest, but stood passively when he stood her on the ground several yards away. He sank to his knees in front of her so that they'd be eye to eye. "Lily. Lily!" He hugged her tight, then held her by the upper arms and shook her as if she were asleep and needed to be awakened. She stared at him with wide eyes, her face full of confusion. He tried his best not to shout, not to scare her, but his voice was urgent, insistent. "What were you doing, Lil? Lily, who were you talking to?"

Behind him, Hermione gasped. She stood on the grave of Tom Riddle, one hand clutched to her chest, the other, incongruously, holding a Muggle children's board game. Ron could make out a jumble of shapes and letters, but could make no sense of it. _Was it runes? _Before he could form a more coherent thought, Hermione had covered the few steps between them and was thrusting it under his nose. O U I J A, it read, in sinister black script. He didn't recognize the word, but he recognized the expression on Hermione's face, and it was enough to fill him with dread. She knew about these things. "It's used for summoning spirits," she wailed, and his brain flooded with questions, but there was no time to ask for explanations, because she was screaming, screaming at him.

"Ron, did you put back the wards? The wards, did you put them all back?" She was shrieking, pleading, crying all at once, the apparently taboo O U I J A board now discarded at her feet. _"Tell me you put back the wards!"_

The ancient greenhouse doors groaned as Neville burst through them, clambering down the steps and racing across the grounds towards Ron and Hermione. He was panting heavily when he reached them.

"Ron! Harry's got…Ginny sent…Patronus…she's crying…dreadful…something…your mum's clock!"

Ron and Hermione looked at each other in horror. Hermione's hand was gripped hard against her chest and she was shaking, all of her questions now reduced to one terrified whisper.

"Ron, what have we done?"

From somewhere deep within the castle, the silence was pierced by a soul-shattering scream.

Thrusting Lily into Neville's arms, Ron and Hermione began to run, their wands and voices raised in familiar unison.

"_Harry!"_


End file.
